Life in a multicultural marriage

Menu

Along comes a dog!

Here is the star of the show-little Pekingese. She showed up in our backyard yesterday while I was replanting flowers. I knew it was a girl because I immediately noticed very fancy pink color with diamond like crystals. At first, we thought that she just running through our backyard and her owner is somewhere near. No. The owner didn’t show up. It was getting dark and we had to take her home and put her in the basement, because there are a lot of coyotes in our neighborhood and they will definitely attack her.

She spent a night and we posted an announcement in our neighborhood website thinking that her owner will show up first think at the morning. Well, nobody showed up yet. We took her picture and posted it everywhere around including food shops nearby. Meantime, we bought food and I pulled up the info about Pekingese. I knew it was an old Chinese breed, but honestly saying I am not into Chinese anything, but food. I never really liked flat-face dogs and didn’t know much about them, I much more prefer dogs with long dogi kinda face. But what to do?

Well, I also learned from Google, that Pekingese is one of the oldest breeds of dog and one of the least genetically diverged from the wolf. The Pekingese breed is over 2000 years old and has hardly changed in all that time. For centuries, they could be owned only by members of Chinese Imperial Palace. They were brought in Europe only in 1860 during Second Opium War when the old summer palace in Beijing. Pekingese are called Lion Dogs due to their resemblance to Chinese guardian Lions. According to legend says that the breed resulted from the mating of a lion and a monkey, getting its nobleness and coat from the former and its ungainly walk from the latter. When you look at our new visitor, you can see it can be true. However, these dogs are known to be very independent, brave and require a treatment as they were kings. I can see now, why her Highness was upset that she was placed in the basement instead of layers of silk pillows at our bed.